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Days of Plunder

by Josh Rottenberg
Entertainment Weekly
May 18, 2007

Finally! A
summer movie rated Arrr! Pirates 3,
the longest and most complex film in the trilogy, sets sail, looking to
outgun
a certain spider.

Last
July 7,
as Pirates of the
Caribbean: Dead
Man's Chest
was
opening around much
of the world, Johnny Depp and Jerry Bruckheimer sat in the oldest
restaurant in
Paris, Le Procope, having dinner and awaiting word of their film's
fate. They
had reason to be anxious. Reviews of the follow-up to the 2003
seafaring-adventure smash Curse of the
Black Pearl had started coming in, and they were enough to
put a man off
his boeuf bourguignon. Critics were slamming the sequel, declaring the
two-and-a-half-hour, $200 million-plus production a bloated, confusing
mess. “We
were right across the street from where Dr. Guillotin perfected the
guillotine,
looking down on his courtyard,” producer Bruckheimer
remembers, “and the
numbers started coming in.” It was quickly clear that no
heads would roll. The
box office returns were not just good, but shiver-some-serious-timbers
good.
Biggest-opening-weekend-ever good. “These numbers kept coming
in, and none of
them made sense to me,” says Depp.”'The only thing
I did notice was that they
kept getting larger.”

Well, hoist the mizzenmast, weigh
anchor, and [insert your
own nautical cliché here], because here we go again. On May
25, the final
installment of Disney's Pirates
trilogy, subtitled At World's End,
will hit theaters across the globe. In the wake of the last film's $1.1
billion
worldwide box office gross—the third-highest in Hollywood
history—expectations
are, to put it mildly, huge. Despite competition from other massive
franchises,
including Spider-Man 3, which just
broke Dead Man's Chest's
opening-weekend record, At World's End
is still widely considered the favorite to rule the summer box office.

The finale picks up where Dead Man's Chest
left off. Feisty
Elizabeth Swann (Keira
Knightley), her swashbuckling beau Will Turner (Orlando Bloom), and the
undead
Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) are uniting to rescue rakish,
rum-soaked Capt.
Jack Sparrow (Depp), who was last seen being dragged into the sea by
the kraken
commanded by Davy Jones (Bill Nighy). Meanwhile, the East India Trading
Co.,
led by the cold-eyed Lord Beckett (Tom Hollander), is trying to snuff
out
piracy once and for all, leading the world's nine pirate lords to join
forces
in a final battle for control of the seas. “It's really a
Western” says
director Gore Verbinski, boiling it all down. “It's like The
Wild Bunch or something.”

While there's no question the movie
will reap heaps of booty
at the box office, it won't necessarily be all smooth sailing. With At
World's End, at 167 minutes,
promising to be even longer and more narratively complicated than Dead
Man's Chest, Verbinski is already
bracing himself for another round of stinging
reviews. “That's
going to happen
again, I suppose,” he says wearily. Which raises the real
question at stake:
Will the conclusion be deemed a worthy capper to a trilogy some have
called
this generation's Star Wars? Or,
like
the Matrix trilogy, with its
successively more ponderous sequels, will it overstay its welcome?

Just weeks before the release,
Bruckheimer sits in an
editing room, giving an advance preview of key scenes from At
World's End. He looks fatigued from
shuttling between Pirates and his
other current
production, National Treasure 2,
but
clearly proud. And with good reason—there are a slew of
eye-popping sequences,
including the sight of the Black Pearl being hauled across a desert on
the
backs of thousands of crabs, the introduction of the menacing pirate
lord of
Singapore, Sao Feng (Chow Yun-Fat), and a climactic
ship-battle-and-sword-fight
extravaganza between the British naval fleet and an armada of pirates
in the
middle of a giant whirlpool. Between clips, Bruckheimer explains the
intricacies of the interweaving plotlines: the double crosses, the
deceptions,
the reversals of fortunes. Setting up one scene, he finds himself
momentarily
tongue-tied by the story's complexity. “It's a little
confus—” he
begins. He stops. He takes a breath. “Let
me back up a little.”

Back
in 2003,
just about no one was expecting a hit movie
about pirates. But Curse of the Black Pearl
pulled in more
than $650 million worldwide, thanks to its rousing derring-do, its
state-of-the-art effects wizardry, and Depp's instantly iconic turn as
Jack
Sparrow. Disney spied a franchise in
the offing. The studio quickly
ordered up
two sequels, and Verbinski and screenwriters Ted Elliott and Terry
Rossio took
up the challenge of turning a one-off popcorn flick into chapter 1 of
an epic
trilogy. The plan was audacious—to film the second and much
of the third film
simultaneously, at a cost that would reportedly soar upward of half a
billion
dollars—and they dove into the shoot with many creative
decisions still to be
made. “We had release dates and blank pages,” says
Verbinski. “It's like, How
Not to Make a Film 101.”

As with other current franchises,
Disney's approach to the Pirates
sequels is vastly different from
that taken in days of old. There was a time not so long ago when
Hollywood
considered sequels an afterthought, dumping them into theaters with
noses
plugged. But in the early 1990s, with the enormous success of Terminator
2 and the increasing ability
to amp up the spectacle factor with newfangled digital effects, sequels
no
longer seemed such a tawdry business. The success of the Lord
of the Rings films, each of which outgrossed the last, made
jumbo-size trilogies de rigueur. “People used to throw
sequels out there as
pure commerce—they'd try and fool the public the first
weekend and then they'd
die,” says Bruckheimer. “Now you have filmmakers
who keep raising the bar.”

For the Pirates
crew, doubling down on the initial bet proved more grueling than
expected. The
Caribbean production was plagued by hurricanes, construction delays,
and
countless logistical nightmares. When the cast and crew reconvened in
California last August to finish At
World's End, they still had about 60 percent of the film left
to shoot. The
story Verbinski and the writers had devised to fill out the trilogy was
as
supersize as the production, bursting with interweaving story lines,
MacGuffins, and mythological references. At times, even the actors were
hard-pressed to keep it all straight. “You had to leave a
trail of bread crumbs
to know where you'd been,” says Depp. “You'd walk
out of a door in scene 191
and then you'd shoot scene 192 a year and a half later, where you've
just
arrived outside that door.” Says Bloom,
“Someone
asked me, ‘So tell us about
your character's arc in the third movie.’ I said,
‘Dude, the writers can't even
explain the third movie.’”

Verbinski defends the more-is-more
approach to storytelling:
“I don't mind if people find it confusing. I don't want to
dumb it down to
where it's just processed cheese and you're not thinking about it
afterwards.”
He and the screenwriters insist nothing was done to take the criticisms
of Dead Man's Chest into account
when
production resumed on At World's End.
The films had been “designed for multiple
viewings,” says Rossio. “You couldn't
do a course correction. That presumes that the course was
off.” Bloom, however,
says, “There was talk of that stuff. Clarity was something
that was talked
about.”

But in the midst of filming sequences
like the massive
battle in the maelstrom, which was actually shot in a stealth-bomber
hangar in
Palmdale, Calif., there was little time to dwell on the reviews. Says
Rush, “You've
got 140 pirates sword-fighting, there are rain and wind machines going,
you're
doing critical dialogue—in that situation, you're not
thinking about the
critics. You're just going, I hope that cannon doesn't roll over my
foot.”
Anyway, those staggering grosses more than offset a minority of
naysayers. “When
you pass the $1.1 billion mark,” Nighy says drily,
“you start to suspect that
you must be doing something right.”

Verbinski
doesn't like to talk money, in particular the
reported $300 million
budget of Pirates 3.
“It's tacky,” he
says. “When you read a book, you don't ask how much the pages
cost to make.”
For
all the tremendous sums poured into the Pirates
movies, some of the bits Verbinski prizes most involved hardly any
expense at
all—like a scene in At World's End
in
which a pirate snaps off one of his frostbitten
toes: “That's
one of my
favorite moments in the movie, and it cost 48 cents with something on
the props
truck.” It's hard to avoid the subject of money when
it comes
to the Pirates franchise, though,
because the
thing has generated so damn much of it. Not just the movies, but the
action
figures, lunch boxes, pillowcases, Xbox games, snow globes, and on and
on. “You
look at what Pirates has done for
our
theme parks, publishing, and consumer products, all these
things,” says Walt
Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook. “I don't know how you put
a price tag on all
that.” At one point while discussing At
World's End, Bloom refers to it as “a
product,” then stops himself: “It's
not a product—that's completely the wrong word. It's a
movie.”

Verbinski, too, keeps his focus on
the films: “My kids look
at the toys sometimes and they're like, ‘Dad, this is
pathetic.’ I'm like, ‘I
just make the movie. If the arm breaks off the doll, that's not my
domain.’
That machine marches on, but you've got to make the movie and let the
other
thing take care of itself. If you left it up to them, this movie would
be
called Pirates of the Caribbean: Nacho
Cheese Flavor.” Depp argues that the Pirates
franchise is actually about subverting the system, whether on the high
seas or
in Hollywood: “It's cool to see that you've planted your flag
deeply in enemy
territory and the enemy is kind of okay with it. We've made our mark.
We have
our own brand of cheese.”

Exhibit A in defense of the
subversive spirit of Pirates could
be the casting of Keith
Richards in a cameo as a pirate who may or may not be Jack Sparrow's
father.
When reports that Richards claimed to have snorted his father's ashes
hit the
news earlier this year, you can imagine the panic at Disney. But
Verbinski
laughs it off: “It's Keith
Richards! Of course he snorted his
dad! I mean, I
don't know if he did or he didn't, but does it matter? If his dad
didn't have a
problem with it, I certainly don't.”

However you look at it
—Nacho Cheese or Depp's Own Fromage—as
the old Doritos ads say: Crunch all you want, they'll make more. As
long as
there's a demand, Disney will continue to deliver Pirates
product. “It'll be ‘Pirates
on Ice’ in Las Vegas,” jokes Rush. Though Verbinski
and his crew are looking forward
to a much-needed shore leave, the potential for further sequels
involving Jack
Sparrow has already been built into At
World's End. “There's something we show you as they
drift away, what the
next adventure could be,” says Bruckheimer.

Depp seems up for another journey, at
least in theory. “As
long as you're doing it for the right reasons, why not? If we came up
with a
story where we could explore something absurd or funny or totally
insane . . .”
He mulls over the possibilities. “You know: Captain Jack is
part ape, he
develops simian traits and an obsession with peanut butter . . . It
could get
really cool. That's the movie I want to do. Let's see that on a box of
cereal.”

The Q & AThe Captain at Ease
By Josh Rottenberg

Prior
to the
opening of Pirates
3,
Johnny Depp opens up about Keith Richards,
nasty
reviews, and the state of his soul. This much he knows: A character
with gold teeth
shouldn't sell toothpaste.

ENTERTAINMENT
WEEKLY:
Before Pirates, you'd never
reprised
a character in a sequel. You got swallowed up by the bed in A
Nightmare on Elm Street, so—

JOHNNY DEPP: Yeah, that ruled me out
of any of those
sequels. [Laughs] The only other
sequel I'd ever thought about was Edward
Scissorhands. There may have been no need to revisit that
story, but back
then I just wanted to play him again. It's the same thing with Captain
Jack,
ultimately. I just wanted to play him again.

Did the
bashing a lot
of critics gave the last Pirates
movie surprise you?

God, no. After the first one was a
success, I was sure that
the critics were going to have to snap around and start taking
potshots. It's
in the rule book: You must take a dump on the second film. And with
this one,
they're probably going to do the same thing and maybe even go below the
belt.
Which is cool. Why not? There are worse things in life.

Of all the
licensed
merchandise that has spun off from the Pirates
movies, has there been anything so far that seemed so surreal, you just
said
“Hold on a second”?

There were only a couple of things
that I thought, Now we're
stepping over the line. I drew the line at hygiene products. It just
seemed
wrong. Like Captain Jack toothpaste, for example. How can a guy with
gold teeth
sell toothpaste? It's like a bald man selling shampoo. And cold cuts
would be
weird: Captain Jack hot dogs, bologna—things like that.

Early in
your career,
you resisted the idea of being on lunch boxes and thermoses. Do you
ever wonder
what your 21 Jump Street-era self
would think if he saw you on a box of Pop-Tarts?

The Jump
Street
guy—that was 20 years ago, and I didn't have a lot of the
perspective or
experience or distance or sense of humor that I do now. Being able to
embrace
the absurdity of it, as opposed to fighting tooth and nail for somebody
to
represent you with some degree of integrity or whatever—I
mean, that's a
ludicrous notion. You can only do your work, and your work represents
whatever
you want it to represent. I've arrived at a certain place where I just
go: You
know what? I don't care. It's freeing.

You were
instrumental
in persuading Keith Richards to make a cameo in At
World's End. What was it like to work with Jack Sparrow's
spiritual godfather?

The anticipation was mad. Everybody
was like, “Is he going to
do it? Is he going to do it?” And then whammo, he arrived at
8 o'clock in the
morning, totally prepped and ready to go. Obviously, Keith
Richards—the guy
invented charisma. But what I didn't expect was he was going to be such
a great
actor. I started calling him “Two-Take Richards.”
It was like this gunslinger
who arrived in the town, charmed all the women and impressed all the
men, and
then split.

The success
of these
movies has obviously boosted your clout in Hollywood. Is that something
you've
felt or does it seem very abstract?

The idea of status or where one
stands in the competitive
marketplace—that kind of thing is really foreign to me. It's
one of those
arenas of ignorance I really prefer to stay in. I've had people say
some of the
strangest things I've ever heard in my life: “Do you know how
much you've
made?” “This is where you are in the power . . .” It just doesn't make sense to
me. I just feel glad that I still get jobs to where I don't have to
sell out or
sell my soul. [Pauses] Although
maybe
I sold my soul already. I don't know, it's hard to tell.

After
several years
of playing Captain Jack, is it a relief to finally be taking on a new
role in
[the Tim Burton-directed musical] Sweeney
Todd?

I wouldn't say it's a relief
necessarily, although having
the safety cushion of another character was nice because it saved me
some
degree of depression saying goodbye to Captain Jack. But Sweeney
Todd is a great challenge. I did a musical, Cry-Baby,
back in 1989, but I didn't
sing. It wasn't my voice. So here I'm challenged with these amazing
melodies of
Stephen Sondheim. That was kind of a bugger to deal with. But I think
we got
there. [Laughs] At least I haven't
been fired yet.